Bread

Recently  I reserved a book called The Breads of France, by Bernard Clayton.  It came out  in 1978. I used to make a lot of bread, and the Clayton book was kind of a bible for me.  I really enjoyed breadmaking, and no matter what you did with them, they tended to turn out quite well. There was one "daily" loaf that I made a lot, something called the Honfleur Country Loaf.  The picture shows the baker's wares:  big, round loves, with decorations suggesting sheaves of wheat(I didn't bother with these, just the loaf itself).

 

More interesting,  Clayton went to Bayeux, and did the Bayeux Tapestry Tour.  There, he discovered a section of the Bayeux Tapestry, where there is a feast going on, and discovered a section of the Tapestry that shows a servant carrying a loaf that Clayton claims is similar to another recipe he gathered -- something he calls Normandy Beaten Bread. For the record, this  breadmaking recipe requires you not only to knead it(for a long time), but also to bash it for a while with a rolling pin or something similar.

 

To get back to the subject,  the Bayeux Tapestry shows a couple of scenes, one of which definitely has somebody holding bread, and one of which probably  has somebody holding bread.  The "definitely one is here, and the "probable" is here.  The "definite" one looks like one of those holiday "ring" loaves you sometimes see around Christmastime.  The "probable" looks a lot like the Honfleur Country Loaf. 

 

Clayton also says that the French nowadays think they brought the art of breadmaking to England.  This, of  course, isn't true; names like "Baker" and "Baxter" were, in Old English,originally male and female bakers!  And, to connect this to medieval England, where this piece properly belongs,I would suggest to the Gentle Reader that the kind of bread that was ordinarily baked in England, was much like the Honfleur Country Loaf.  It's too bad the book is out of print, and it's too bad that, as far as I know, there isn't a nice picture of the bread in Internetland. Then I could add a picture so you could see for yourselves.  However,  I do have the recipe, if anyone reading this would like to try it.  It's kind of fun if you want to do some "artisan" breadmaking over a weekend. 

 

Honfleur Country Loaf(and I'm fairly sure this is something like what people in medieval England ate):

INGREDIENTS:

Starter

1 tablespoon honey

1 cup warm(not hot) water

1 package dry yeast

1 cup all-purpose flour

1 cup whole wheat flour

 

Dough

All of starter

2 cups warm water

1 tablespoon salt

2 cups whole wheat flour

2-3 cups all-purpose flour

 

1 or2 baking sheets, greased, sprinkled with cornmeal

 

PREPARATION:

Starter: 

In a large bowl, dissolve honey in 1 cup warm water and add yeast.  Stir to dissolve and let rest until creamy.  Add 1/2 cup each of whole wheat and white bread to make the starter batter.  Add balance of flours to make a shaggy mass you can work with your hands.  Knead for 3 minutes.  Toss in liberal amounts of white flour if slack or sticky. Cover bowl and leave at room temperature 4 hours or overnight.

Dough:

Pour 2 cups warm water over starter.  Stir with large wooden spoon or rubber scraper to break up dough.Add salt.  Place 2 cups each of white and whole wheat flours at the side ofthe mixing bowl.  Add equal parts of each,1/2 cup at a time. Stir with utensil , then work it with hands.  You may need more white flour to keep the dough from getting sticky.  Lift from bowl with hands.

 

KNEADING

Place  the dough on a floured surface and knead aggressively. Once in a while. lift the dough up and bang it against the floured surface.  This is fun(gets rid of all your tensions), and it speeds up the process. Do this three or four times, then continue to knead.  After a while, the dough will be moist and solid. 

 

FIRST RISING

Return the dough to the washed and greased bowl.  Cover tightly, leave at room temperature 3-4 hours or overnight, if necessary, until it doubles in volume.

 

SHAPING

Push down dough and turn out on a well-floured work surface.  Divide the dough into several pieces and shape into tight balls. Reserve 1 cup of the dough to make wheat stalks, if desired. Place on baking sheet and press tops down to flatten slightly.

 

SECOND RISING

The loaves are left under wax paper or other covering to triple in size.  This takes about 2 1/2 hours. 

 

BAKING(50 minutes)

Preheat oven to 425 degrees, about 20 minutes.  Place a broiler pan on the bottom shelf.  Five minutes before the bread goes in the oven, pour 1 cup hot tap water in the pan for a moist, steamy oven.  Place loaves on the middle shelf.  Midway through the bake period, shift the loaves so that each loaf gets equal heat.  Loaves are done when golden brown.  Bottom crust will sound hard and hollow when tapped with a finger.  Place on metal rack and cool.  Freezes well

 

Oh, and don't forget to enjoy!

Anne G

Ælfthryth, Royal Evil Stepmother

Queen Ælfthryth (elf-thrith) is one of the rare Anglo Saxon women who have made their way into history for more than just whose daughter, wife or mother she was. The wicked stepmother in all its sinister meaning, her legacy includes, among other dramatics, the martyrdom of King Edward the Martyr.

Ælfthryth was of royal blood on both sides of her family. She was reputed to be so lovely that it is said that the great King Edgar sent Æthelwald, a trusted ally, to go and see for himself and, if the stories were true, to make an offer for her hand on the behalf of the king. Æthelwald, discovering just how beautiful she was, married her himself. he wrote to King Edgar and told him the woman was a hideous beast. Edgar was no fool, and he sent word that he would come to console Ælfthryth for her affliction. Æthelwald begged his new wife to make herself appear as ugly as possible for the king, but she did the opposite. King Edgar fell madly in love with her and murdered Æthelwald during a hunt. That a marriage with so high a noblewoman helped his own standing was all gravy.

King Edgar had been married before and had children with his first two wives. He and Ælfthryth were married in 964 or 965. Although Edward, the son of his first wife, was older, the king declared his first son by Ælfthryth, as his heir. Alas, Edmund died in 970, leaving a little brother, Ethelred, who was born in 968. In 973 Edgar, no doubt to strengthen his claim to being King of England, arranged to be crowned a second time, and he also had Ælfthryth crowned and anointed as queen, the highest status yet held by the wife of the king.

Two years later Edgar died, leaving two sons, Edward by his first and Ælfthryth's son Ethelred. Edward was much nearer his majority and had the support of the archbishops of Canterbury and York Dunstan and Oswald, and the powerful Æthelwine, Ealdorman of East Anglia, who happened to be the brother of Ælfthryth first, late husband. Though Ethelred had his own strong supporters, Edward was crowned as their father's successor.

In 978 Kind Edward visited his stepmother and brother at Corfe Castle. As he rode into sight, he was attacked and murdered by men believed to be in Ælfthryth's servbice. Ethelred, just a few years old, became King of England, with his mother Ælfthryth in power as regent until he came of age in 984. Ælfthryth, her former allies all dead, retired from court life when her son became king, but wielded influence as the caretaker of the children Ethelred had by his first wife, Ælffigu.

In spite of her legendary murder of her stepson Edward, Ælfthryth was known as a deeply religious woman. She spent many years supporting the cause of monastic reform. She died between 999 and 1001 at the Hampshire village of Wherwell.

Old English Riddles - a thousand years of double entendre

“I am a wonderful help to women
The hope of something good to come
I harm only my slayer
I grow very tall, erect in a bed
I am shaggy down below
The lovely girl grabs my body, rubs my red skin
Holds me hard, claims my head.
That girl will feel our meeting!
I bring tears to her eyes!
What am I?”

(Answer at the foot of the post.)

This is Riddle 23 from the Exeter Book. The word ‘riddle’ derives from the same root as the Old English word ‘-raed’, meaning ‘counsel, explain, teach’. A riddle is typically a short poem describing a familiar object or activity in a cryptic way, and the listener (or reader, after they came to be written down) has to work out what is being described. They can be clever, witty, poetic, beautiful, almost mystical. As this one shows, they can also display a bawdy sense of humour. Seven of the Exeter Book Riddles are of the same form as Riddle 23.

English/British humour seems to be uncommonly fond of the risque double meaning. It’s a staple of seaside postcards, Carry On films, Frankie Howerd scripts, not to mention Shakespeare (“Thou wilt fall backward when thou hast more wit, wilt thou not Juliet?”). In English, it seems, any entendre can be double’d. It’s rather nice to see proof that this hasn’t changed in a thousand years.

The Exeter Book is believed to be the “…one large book in English verse about various subjects” which was bequeathed to the Exeter Cathedral Library by Leofric, first Bishop of Exeter, in 1072. It survives in Exeter Cathedral Library to this day. The date of its composition is not known, though it’s usually ascribed to the second half of the tenth century, say around 960 or so. The Exeter Book contains a remarkable variety of Old English verse, religious and secular, including The Seafarer, The Wanderer, The Husband’s Message, The Wife’s Lament, Widsith and, of course, the Riddles.

To me, the Exeter Book Riddles show early English culture in an attractive light. Clearly these were people who liked jokes as well as elegies, who valued mundane tasks as well as heroes, and who enjoyed intelligent word games but weren’t above a vulgar belly laugh. It’s worth remembering that the Exeter Book was a gift from a bishop to his cathedral library, presumably expected to be read mainly by monks and other clerics. Evidently at least one senior churchman of the time was no prim killjoy.

Do you have a favourite riddle?



Answer: an onion. Whatever were you thinking?

Avalon: Gateway to Annwn

What exactly was the Isle of Avalon?

Most scholars agree that it was some sort of spiritual center dating from very ancient times. Its tight association with the historical side of the Arthurian legends draws us to Celtic Britain in the fifth and sixth centuries, where clues of Avalon’s existence begin to emerge from the mists of antiquity.

Literature provides the first references. Probably the most popular version was written by the twelfth-century Welshman, Geoffrey of Monmouth. In his History of the Kings of Britain, King Arthur is carried to the Isle of Avalon to rest and heal after his last battle. The magical sword Excalibur was forged there. Geoffrey further describes Avalon in The Life of Merlin as the home of the enchantress Morgaine le Fey, the island named in Welsh as Ynys Avallach, or "Island of Apples." This is apt, as apples symbolize plenty and magic in Celtic tradition.

In the Black Book of Carmarthen, one of the ancient Welsh books on which Geoffrey of Monmouth very likely based much of his History, it is said that Arthur’s tomb was secretly located in Avalon. Pagan Celts did not believe in death, but that the soul lives forever. Therefore, Arthur would not be thought of as dead, but merely sleeping, waiting for the call to his next coming. Presumably, because of its significance to the society of Arthur’s day, Avalon had very likely existed for quite some time and was considered the only place special enough to take the mortally wounded king. Why else would a leader of his great stature be taken there? No other leader before or since is associated with the Isle.It is nearly impossible to define Avalon’s purpose without seeking its physical location as part of the same task. While no location can be absolutely proven, just as Arthur’s very existence has never been conclusive, the legends are very probably rooted in reality. Most indications infer, albeit circumstantially, that Glastonbury in Somerset, England was the location of Avalon. Glastonbury’s name is the Anglicized descendant of the Celtic (primitive Welsh) name Ynys Witrin, or Glass Isle.

In the fifth century, the marshy area around Glastonbury flooded cyclically, cutting off higher ground and creating an island. In calm weather, the water would lie smooth as glass. Glastonbury Tor, a large, oblong-shaped hill rising above the town, is flanked by apple orchards, and has been for time out of mind, giving the name Ynys Avallach credence as well. And in Arthur’s day, the area was occupied by people of the same stock the modern Welsh descend from, their names, traditions, stories, and legends following.

Many theories as to Avalon’s purpose have crossed the scholarly world. Using the assumption that Glastonbury is the likely location, one of the most intriguing ideas arises from the strong sense of ancient paganism tied to the area. In the Book of Taliesin, the poem The Spoils of Annwn tells how Arthur and his knights descend into Annwn, the Celtic Otherworld, to steal a mystic cauldron of inspiration and plenty. Annwn is the realm of Gwyn ap Nudd, king of the Faeries and lord of Annwn, and the Tor is his sacred mountain. Avalon is portrayed as a gathering place for departed spirits preparing to go to Annwn, and Gwyn guards the portals. The cauldron magically provides unending nourishment and rebirth. This is the original grail which Arthur’s knights quested after so desperately, before Christian believers shifted its importance to their own purpose. Supportive evidence shows that Glastonbury Tor is artificially terraced in a pattern reminiscent of pre-Christian ritual paths, similar to others across Europe associated with Goddess worship. Archaeology has determined that the pattern is more ancient and complex than originally thought, a seven-circuited labyrinth rather than a simple spiral. There are also persistent rumors of a secret chamber within the Tor, into which people wander and return to the world mad, a trait identified with faery encounters.

In a more recent line of reasoning, author Marion Zimmer Bradley takes this interpretation a bold step further. Combining it with Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History in her book The Mists of Avalon, she beautifully portrays Avalon as Morgaine le Fey’s domain. Morgaine is the last high priestess of the ancient goddess religion before Christianity takes over. She is the Lady of Lake, and Avalon is the most sacred site in Britain, the obvious location for Excalibur to have been forged, the grail to be kept, and Arthur to be taken as he lay dying from his battle wounds. It is the mystical place where one crosses from Cylch y Abred, the middle world we live in , to Annwn, the Otherworld. While Bradley’s interpretation has been presented as fiction, there is logical research behind her theory. Ancient Celtic tradition across Britain and Europe includes the belief that we are connected to the earth by an umbilical, known by the Greek term, omphalos, the "navel of the world." A cosmic axis, sometimes symbolized by an upright stone, connects the upper world of Gwynvyd (heaven) and lower world of Annwn, running through the middle world (Abred). The omphalos is considered a place of spiritual power, a center where this world and the others cross most powerfully. Consistently, Glastonbury Tor is a prime candidate as an omphalos. Its very shape is womb-like, and its persistent tradition of spirituality has always been and still is like a magnet to people of all faiths.

History is purely an interpretation of the evidence we have gathered about life in the past. Many times the "facts" are circumstantial, a combination of archaeology, literature, and human supposition; for each historian you have, each will give a different viewpoint. Into the fifth and sixth centuries, the Celtic oral-based customs prohibited writing down stories, genealogies, scientific knowledge. There is little left to forge our theories from, and we may never truly understand Avalon. Sadly, and literally, nothing was written in stone.

This article first appeared in Faces of the Goddess magazine, Spring 1998
© Kathleen Cunningham Guler
Photo © Lynne Newton

Some more English months

In an earlier post , Carla noted that according to one Old English calendar, February was "cake month".  Hmmmmm. . . . . This, apparently, was the calendar the Venerable Bede used.  But there may have been several in use.  Elsewhere, by various means, I found another calendar, which may have been more "agricultural" or "popular" .  I will list the months below, but note:  since I have no familiarity whatsoever with Old English, other than a little German I studied years ago, all the names have been translated into modern English, though, at the time, I found myself quite able to figure out what most  of the modern equivalents were.  Here, for your edification, if that's the word, are the months:

 

January       Wolf Month

February     Kale Month

March           Lent Month

April              Easter Month

May               Mead Month

June              Hay Month

July               Midsummer Month

August         Ern Month(I think)

September Harvest Month

October      Wine Month

November Wind Month

December  Midwinter Month

 

These "month names" are interesting.  It's easy, for instance, to see how February is "kale month";  kale is a pretty tough plant that grows leafy, dark green leaves through much of the winter, and in Anglo-Saxon times, winters may have been mild enough for kale to grow through times where greens might otherwise have been unavailable.  And we get the liturgical season of "Lent" from the Old English name for March(the days are lengthening). Easter is obvious, too.  It is a little surprising that  "May" comes from "mead", but since mead is made from honey, flowers would be blooming and it would be possible to gather honey.  July is more or less the calendrical midpoint of summer. 

The only one of these months I couldn't figure out was August, "Ern" month!  But September was easy, too, since "herfast" translates easily to "harvest", and, interestingly the autumn season is "Herbst" in German today.   Anglo-Saxon England must have had a fairly mild climate, because October was "Wine Month"(if you could grow wine there, it must have been during the "medieval warm period"!). As for November, well, anybody who lives where I do, knows well about the wretched windstorms that sometimes hit my part of the world(and can do considerable damage in a "modern" context, though people in Anglo-Saxon times wouldn't have had to worry about power lines being blown down).  And December is pretty obvious, too, if you think about it.  December 21 is the shortest day of the year. 

 

Oh, I forgot January, "Wolf month".  That makes sense, too.  I don't know how much of a problem people then, thought they had with wolves, but wolves still existed in England at the time, and people were afraid of them and disliked them(agricultural people usually do, for obvious reasons).  Wolves, and their tracks, are often most easily seen(and heard), in the winter, because food is scarce, and packs will venture near human habitation in order to try to find some.

 

Perhaps a slightly different viewpoint here, but apparently calendars weren't entirely standardized , or at least different groups called months by different names.  Interesting perspective, that.

Anne G

February (Solmonath): the Anglo Saxon calendar

Before they converted to Christianity and adopted the Roman calendar, the early English (‘Anglo-Saxons’) used a calendar based on the cycles of the sun and the moon.

Summary of the English calendar

The year was a solar year, and the two most important dates were the summer solstice (Midsummer, the longest day of the year) and the winter solstice (Midwinter, the shortest day of the year). The winter solstice was called Guili, or Yule, and is the origin of our word “Yuletide” for Christmas. Each new year began at Yule.

The year was divided into two seasons, governed by the spring and autumn equinoxes (the points when the day and night are of exactly equal length). The season when the days were longer than the nights was called summer, the season when the nights were longer than the days was called winter.

Months were reckoned by a full cycle of the moon. Since Bede tells us that winter began at the full moon of October, the months presumably also began at the full moon. The number of days in a solar year isn’t an exact multiple of the number of days in a lunar cycle, so there are 12-and-a-bit lunar months in a year. As a result, the English months moved around in relation to the solar year. Every so often an extra month was added at Midsummer, making a 13-month year, to keep the months aligned roughly with the seasons.

We know this from a contemporary document, Bede’s On the Reckoning of Time, written in 725 AD. Bede was concerned mainly with teaching his students how to calculate Christian festivals, such as that perennially knotty problem of the early Church, the correct date of Easter. Fortunately for the scholar of early England, however, Bede kindly added a chapter (Chapter 15) explaining how his people had calculated months before they adopted Christianity. It provides the main documentary evidence we have for the pre-Christian English calendar.

February – Solmonath, or Month of Cakes

The second month of the year, corresponding roughly with the Roman (and modern) month of February, was called Solmonath.

‘Monath’ is the Old English word for a month, and the direct ancestor of our modern English word ‘month’. ‘Sol’ is the Old English word for ‘mud’, see the online Dictionary of Old English. So Solmonath can be prosaically translated as ‘Mud Month’, which, as anyone who has ever walked across a ploughed field or tried to dig a vegetable garden at this time of year can tell you, is entirely appropriate to the usual weather.

Some people have suggested that ‘sol’ should be translated as ‘earth’ or ‘soil’ rather than ‘mud’, and so Solmonath might have a less prosaic meaning, perhaps more like ‘Earth Month’ or ‘month when the earth was honoured’.

Others have noted that ‘sol’ with a long ‘o’ is the Old English word for ‘sun’ (see the Old English dictionary. In temperate Europe, February is the time of year when the increase in day length that begins at the winter solstice becomes really noticeable, so it’s possible that ‘sol’ in the month name might refer to this visible returning of the sun.

According to the Old English dictionary, ‘sol’ in Old English could also mean a wooden halter for animals. So I’ll toss in another theory – perhaps ‘sol’ in the month name referred to the collar oxen wore to draw the plough, and Solmonath meant something like ‘Plough Month’? I haven’t seen that suggested elsewhere.

Whether Solmonath was the Mud Month, the Earth Month, the Sun Month or the Plough Month doesn’t really matter. Bede tells us something even more interesting about it:

Solmonath can be called “month of cakes”, which they offered to their gods in that month.

--Bede, On the Reckoning of Time, Chapter 15. Translated by Faith Wallis.

The reference to cakes is reminiscent of an Old English charm for making a field fertile, the Aecerbot or Field Remedy. The charm survives written down in a manuscript dating from the tenth or eleventh century, though it may well be derived from a much older tradition.

Take then each kind of flour and have someone bake a loaf [the size of] a hand's
palm and knead it with milk and with holy water and lay it under the first
furrow. Say then:
Field full of food for mankind,
bright-blooming, you are blessed
in the holy name of the one who shaped heaven
and the earth on which we live;
the God, the one who made the ground, grant us the gift of growing,
that for us each grain might come to use.

--Aecerbot, translated by Karen Louise Jolly

The surviving wording of the charm is Christianised, but it doesn’t take a very great leap of the imagination to suggest that the god who was being asked to make the field fertile could just as easily be a non-Christian deity. Kathleen Herbert has argued that the deity being petitioned was an earth goddess (Herbert 1994).

Whatever the deity, Bede’s description of cakes being offered to ‘their gods’ is certainly consistent with a rite similar to that described in the Aecerbot charm.

There is no (surviving) Old English word ‘sol’ meaning cake, and it has been suggested that Bede was mistaken about either the name of the month or the tradition attached to it. I would be very reluctant to think that we know more about Bede’s culture than he did, so I personally would take his word for it. It is worth noting that he says Solmonath “can be called” the month of cakes, which may indicate that “month of cakes” was an informal name like a nickname, or that the month could have several names. Another suggestion is that the cakes offered to the gods were called something like sun cakes, from the ‘sun’ meaning of ‘sol’. In which case February, Solmonath, might mean something like Sun Cake Month.

References
Full-text sources available online are linked in the text.
Bede: The Reckoning of Time. Translated by Faith Wallis. Liverpool University Press, 1999, ISBN 0-85323-693-3.
Herbert, Kathleen. Looking for the Lost Gods of England. Anglo-Saxon Books, 1994. ISBN 1-898281-04-1.

Anglo-Saxon fun stuff

I inhabit several e-mail lists.  On one of them, I "know" someone whose last name is Elphick.  Now, Elphick is not a very common last name.  And I doubt if anybody would associate it with anything remotely Anglo-Saxon.  But if you go back, say, 1000 years, you will find people whose given names, eventually gave rise to "Elphick".  But back in "them days", their names weren't "Elphick".  They were called "Aelfheah".  You might get a clue as to how "Aelfheah" morphed into Elphick, eventually, if you run across some Victorian writers who wrote this name as "Alphege"(it was the name of a bishop, I think, but I'd have to look this up).  Really, though, the name was "Aelfheah".  What's even more interesting is, "Aelfheah" originally meant "high elf", or maybe "arch-elf".  A bishop named Arch-elf might seem kind of strange to us, but then, such names were common 1000 years or more ago, at least in England. 

 

Finally, let us not forget that there are a number of last names that derive, ultimately, from Anglo-Saxon sources, and most of them are a lot more familiar than Elphick.  Godwin/Goodwin is one of these; there is a plaque at our central library dedicated to a lady with a hyphenated name(one of the names is Japanese)-Goodwin.  And then there are people called things like Dunning, which was a man's name back 1000 years or more ago.  Some first names(especially for men) have made it into the modern world, too.  How many Alfreds or Edwards  or even Harolds do you know?  Probably you know some. 

 

In any case, these connections to a seemingly vanished world still exist.  And that's a fun fact, if you think about it.

Anne G